A DANGEROUS new film is POISONING Sundance, BRAZENLY glorifying psychotic breaks as “joy” and “community.” Indonesian filmmaker Wregas Bhanuteja’s “Levitating” is a SHOCKING manifesto that encourages audiences to ABANDON reality for spirit-channeling trances, with mental health experts warning it could TRIGGER vulnerable viewers and ROMANTICIZE severe dissociation.
The plot follows a young musician’s “obsessive quest” to become a vessel for spirits, framed as heroic while his village is threatened by outsiders. But the REAL threat is the film’s message: that ESCAPING into hallucinatory states is a valid form of happiness. Bhanuteja ADMITS to childhood jealousy over a sibling who “saw spirits,” exposing a DISTURBING personal fixation that warps this entire project.
In a STUNNING act of cultural deception, Bhanuteja CONFESSES the ritual choreography is TOTAL FICTION—fabricated from animal spirits like leeches and fleas. This isn’t preservation; it’s PREDATORY appropriation, creating a “universal” language that ERASES true tradition for eerie spectacle. Actors were pushed to “let go of control” in methods eerily similar to cult indoctrination.
The director claims to explore “how many different ways humans find joy,” but this is a LETHAL LIE. The film actually documents obsession’s corrosive power, showing how the pursuit of transcendental escape DESTROYS the very human connections it pretends to cherish. As Sundance celebrates this film, it silently endorses a narrative that could NORMALIZE psychosis as art.
This isn’t cinema; it’s a RECRUITMENT video for losing your mind, and as audiences applaud, they’re one step closer to accepting that madness is the only sane response to a broken world.
Author: Kayitsi.com
